


glossolalia

by tremontaine



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dirty Talk, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Language Kink, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:12:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7214626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tremontaine/pseuds/tremontaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Natasha and Bucky aren't as competitive as Steve thinks, and absolutely no one has a language kink. At all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	glossolalia

 

It’s not that they’re competitive. Steve thinks it is, but Steve measures everyone by his own standards and consequently has been trying to learn Mandarin Chinese for the last two months because he can’t bear it that both Natasha and James speak it and he doesn’t. He’ll probably be fluent in another six weeks; it took about four months for Wanda to teach him flawless Sokovian, too.

But really, Natasha and James aren’t competitive. Maybe in the field a little, but that’s not about winning: that’s about showing up each other’s flaws and making each other safe by teaching one another how to close the cracks. The first-one-to-get-spotted-buys-breakfast thing, the spar-till-first-blood thing and the Helm’s Deep game aren’t about score keeping so much as about pushing each other to be better.

(Uh-huh, says Steve. Sure. Sounds legit. Oh hey Nat, Bucky says he’s on twenty-seven _already_.)

Genuinely not competitive. It’s just that, honestly, if the man’s got her bent over the kitchen table with her nightdress rucked up round her hips and his cock so beautifully deep inside her she can taste it in her throat the _polite_ thing to do is surely to talk dirty at her in a language she doesn’t need to use her brain to understand. Natasha’s so far gone she’s officially no longer on planet Earth; he’s so big and so hot and every thrust is him pounding into her sweet spot and her bare skin is sticking to the table top and her tits ache where they’re pressed flat to the wood because he’s got an obsession with worrying her nipples sore before he fucking fucks her and god it feels so good every time that she lets him even against her better judgement and her brain’s so scrambled by the way his hands are gripping her hips and the noise of him panting that he’s been talking dirty in German to her for five fucking minutes before she recognises the language, let alone understands the words, and it’s distracting.

“English,” she insists, clenching her fists on the wood, “English or Russian you rude asshole,” and he laughs at her.

“What, what?”

“The German,” she says, “it’s distracting.”

“Good,” he rasps, “good, good, don’t want this over, ich werd’ dich ficken bis die Welt untergeht, wir bleiben hier für immer, Natasha, hörst du mich, du machst mich so verdammt spitz und ich will dich immer, jede verdammte Sekunde jedes Tages,” and just the sound of his voice is driving her so high she’s sobbing with it, any meaning to his words floated away, unimportant.

+++

Usually he talks to her in English and she talks to him in Russian. There comes a point where she’s so swept up and unravelled and out of her mind that any foreign language just gets kind of… blown away. The effort involved in translating her thoughts to another language becomes immense, because it requires more concentration than she has.

Natasha loves it that she doesn’t have to summon that concentration with James, that she can slide into her mother tongue whenever she wants to and know he understands her. She would love him if he didn’t speak a word of Russian, that’s not the point, but it’s – it’s just so nice. It’s been so long since she spoke it regularly with someone who didn’t fumble through the sentences or need her to speak more slowly so they could follow her words. Sometimes, when she hears herself speaking Russian to him, she almost feels like a different person to who she is when she speaks English. She built Natasha Romanov out of the leftovers of the dead-eyed Widow whom Clint befriended; English was the tool she used to shape her, this SHIELD agent – this Avenger. Going back to Russian, especially in her private life, especially to someone who understands it, makes Natasha feel younger, a little vulnerable; made new, somehow.

+++

( _You don’t mind it, do you?_ she asks him once. _Because of –_

_What? Karpov?_ James holds up his hand between them, his left hand. _Do you mind this?_

Part of you, he means; thus, something I love. Natasha takes his hand in hers and kisses the palm.)

+++

Anyway. She’s pretty sure he didn’t mean to slip into German that first time, but the French is definitely deliberate: he’s grinning that lopsided grin at her, and he slides two fingers into her mouth while he talks to keep her quiet, which makes her clench around his cock and ride him harder, push him back into the pillows and brace her hands on his chest, but the speech this gets her is still in French, and Natasha can’t get them both off and translate the stuff at the same time. When she tries she collapses into giggles, because really, what kind of International Woman of Mystery/Super-Spy can’t translate French – French dirty talk, no less, though for all she can tell he might be reciting engineering specifications – and fuck her boyfriend at the same time? James rolls them over and fucks her slow and lazy and torturous, her arms around his neck, both of them mostly failing at kissing through the fits of laughter.

+++

The time with the Italian she gets away with it because she’s curled between those ridiculously strong thighs blowing him, two fingers tucked inside him to tease his prostate and her saliva wetting his cock, his right hand tangled in her hair where it’s draped over his leg, and there’s no reasonable way she can be expected to answer in any language.

+++

Besides, he doesn’t expect her to answer. And it really could be engineering specifications every time; it’s the sound of his voice and the way he licks his lips and that crooning little lilt and the way the words vibrate against her lips when she kisses his throat…

She supposes she expects herself to answer. Or to understand, at least. It’s just – those three minutes when her brain is shorted out and she can’t tell what language he’s speaking are – are –

“The _whole point_ of sex,” says James, putting his cutlery down to stare at her over the breakfast table.

Natasha bats that away with a dismissive gesture, and he groans.

“Sex isn’t about _orgasms_ ,” she says.

“You think being happy is a frivolous indulgence, none of your opinions about sex get to count.” He’s pointing his fork at her accusatorily.

“That’s not true!”

“Be honest with yourself,” says James. “You and I can be nauseatingly intimate with each other on a battlefield while killing people, sex is definitely about orgasms.” There’s a tightness around his eyes and in the corners of his mouth where he’s trying to keep a straight face.

Natasha sniggers before she can stop herself. “You be honest with yourself,” she says fondly. “You’re a guy and you do all your thinking with your dick. Colour me shocked.”

“Well,” he says. “If you’re so set on wiping out this perceived weakness in the Widow’s skill set, there’s only one thing to do.”

“Oh, _is_ there.” She’s not an idiot. She knows where this is going.

“Train,” he says innocently. Butter wouldn’t melt. She kind of is, but he doesn’t need to know that.

+++

Natasha remembers the Soldier’s training regimes. He didn’t speak, except to tell you to do it again, and he never gave explanations or orders in advance, preferring the sink-or-swim method of instruction, and he neither berated nor praised you. Except for that once, when he’d nodded at her, and something in his face had softened, as if he’d been about to smile.

She loves the sound of his voice. It’s not a mystery why.

+++

Sprawled on his front across the bed, his ass in the air and his legs spread wide, he begs for her so pretty, the hoarse voice and the little gasps and the breathless moans much, much more interesting than the words themselves; she’s slicked him up and stretched him open and he’s holding his cheeks apart for her while she rubs the head of the dildo around his pink wet hole, watching the muscle flutter, when she realises he’s been talking for at least ten minutes and she doesn’t know what language –

Wait.

“Spanish,” she says, and pushes inside him, inch by slow sweet inch, watching the tremors running through him and the way he writhes back against her, the powerful body pliant and open. “Spanish, that’s not hard.” She’s speaking Russian herself. Her chest is hollowed out with longing, and she doesn’t know what part of him she wants to look at the most, and his skin’s so hot and smooth under her hands, and she’s so wet she can feel it on her thighs, her cunt swollen, empty.

“Baby steps, my darling,” he rasps, and then trails off into a litany of Spanish endearments Natasha is fairly sure he must have looked up on the internet prior to this, because no mission would ever have required him to learn them.

That’s cheating. She’s not sure she minds.

+++

Mandarin next, the radio playing, their books abandoned, the Sunday newspaper destroyed by the side of the bed, her face tucked into the crook of his neck while he rubs his hands over her back and croons to her, nonsense noises that only slowly resolve themselves into endearments again, fervent promises never to leave her, filthy odes of praise to how good she is to him, how hot and tight and wet around his cock, how sweet it is to hold her like this and keep her with him always, how she ought to always have his cock inside her.

“Chinese,” Natasha whispers, punch-drunk on pleasure, boneless, sated, the smell of him in every breath she draws.

“Chinese,” James agrees. “Good girl. My sweet girl. Deserve a reward for working that out…”

She bites at his collar-bone, making him hiss. “No, no, no more, no more –”

“Is that no more as in stop or no more as in harder?”

Natasha shudders, all the way through her body, head to toe, his hot skin sticking to hers; god she hates to have to call it, to think, to make herself shake off the drugging fog of sex long enough to decide. Why can’t he read her mind?

“No more as in never stop,” she forces out, her tongue tangling in the Mandarin syllables, and James laughs sweetly and kisses her over and over and drops his hands to her ass and says, “Your wish, my love,” and starts to bounce her on his cock again.

+++

“Is that Urdu?” says Natasha.

“Uh-huh,” says James. “Don’t make fun of my accent, please.” He grins at her.

She sniffs. “Your accent’s terrible in every language.”

“Mmph,” he says. “That’s rude.” And he takes his thumb off her clit and slides his fingers out of her cunt and tucks them, wet and a little wrinkled with it, into her ass; Natasha writhes when he presses his thumb into her cunt, not deep enough and not nearly thick enough to give her what she wants.

“Oh,” she says, moaning, trying to screw her hips down onto his hand. “Oh why do I _keep_ you.”

“No idea,” James says cheerfully, and kisses her, laughing.

+++

“Swahili!” she says when he’s barely two sentences in, hooking her legs over his hips to pull him in deeper, and he kisses her open-mouthed.

“Top marks, Romanov,” he says, lacing their fingers together by her head, “top marks.”

She laughs softly, her fingers tangled in his thick hair, and bites at his lower lip as they start to move in concert.

+++

“Hmm,” Natasha says. “Peace and quiet. This is nice.”

He shudders like he’s trying not to say something, his shoulders hunching up, his eyes crinkling with his amusement, and down the long lovely curve of that strong back she can see his wrists crossed above his ass, the glass gripped carefully in his left hand, a fine-tuned weapon forced to gentleness. His right hand is still damp with her slick, his cock hard and red and leaking pre-come all over himself and the black cock-ring; she can’t wait to take it off and watch him come. Natasha leans back into the armchair, spreading her legs yet further, and crooks her finger at him. James shuffles forwards on his knees till he’s right up against the chair, pale eyes fixed on her face, hot and wanting.

“There. There, baby. Come and do something useful with that luscious mouth for a change.” She buries her hands in his hair, and he licks his kiss-bitten lips and bends so sweetly to her words, eager for a taste of her. “Don’t make me come,” she orders. “Gonna lay you out after and ride you through the floor, and I don’t want to come until your cock’s inside me.”

He nods once, and then he buries his face in her cunt, and Natasha lets her head fall back against the armchair and sighs in delight.

+++

Arabic while they’re in the bath, hands all over each other, the hot water turning their skin pink. They’ve not moved past making out yet, but it counts if she says it counts.

Portuguese one Sunday morning, slow and sleepy, early-morning cuddling sliding sweetly into lovemaking, James behind her, her foot hooked over his calf, a trail of beard-burn across her shoulder, down her right arm. Swedish on the living room floor later that same day, her mouth on his cock, her knees spread around his head, until he gets bored with talking and puts his mouth on her instead.

Serbian when he’s curled between her legs, his nose bumping her clit, hot breath on her empty cunt agonising, and when she tells him to put his fingers in her well-fucked ass and keep his come inside her he flushes beautifully; it’s not till she catches hold of his right wrist and says, “Your other hand, baby,” that he chokes on a curse that she’s fairly sure is Turkish and nearly comes again right there.

+++

It’s all fun and games until they’re on a mission in Mumbai and he slides into a dialect of Hindustani to talk to a witness, and suddenly, even though he’s about three miles away and they’re both working and the comms are kind of on the fritz, all Natasha can think about is getting him naked. God, the sound of his _voice_ , and how he - and she just -

“Pavlov’s dog,” she mutters in Russian. “I’m Pavlov’s dog.” James Barnes opens his mouth and a foreign language comes out => Natasha Romanov gets wet. Isn’t that typical.

“Sorry, what?” says Steve, glancing up from the computer screen. He looks distinctly frazzled; probably the heat.

Natasha sighs. “Nothing. How’s your Mandarin coming along, by the way?”

He perks up, which makes her smile, and she spends the rest of the mission correcting his pronunciation and forcing herself to think about mudslides and backed-up toilets whenever her mind goes a-wandering.

+++

_Is_ it competitiveness? Quite apart from disliking on principle the notion that Steve might be right, because Steve just doesn’t need that kind of encouragement, the idea makes Natasha uneasy. Competitiveness means a striving to win, and some dead-eyed part of her will always equate a win with a kill. Given her and James’ past, that takes on unpleasant associations she wouldn’t have with anyone else. Or – possibly even worse – is she still standing in that concrete gym hall, hands lightly clenched, waiting for that little nod, the almost-smile… She was twenty, Graduated, an active and accomplished Black Widow. Approval from any of her trainers just meant she’d succeeded at making herself the monster they wanted…

She loves James for the way he refuses to be that half-human tool they’d beaten him into, for how he tries his damndest always not to have to kill anyone, how he loves Steve, how he likes to sit by the open window in the mornings and watch the world go by while he’s drinking his coffee, how he cuts his hair and cooks his food and smiles at her; the music he listens to, the piles of books he’s always reading, his habit of wearing gloves, his soft startled laugh, the dreamy way he looks at her, all love and admiration.

All right, all _right_. It’s a hang-up all her own and it’s got nothing to do with James and never has done. Fine. Whatever.

Except Natasha really, really wishes this mission were over and there was no language but English being spoken anywhere in her immediate vicinity because seriously, this is torture. It’s, like, the shape of his mouth, and the way he always gets that little half-smile, as if he’s unsure of the words even when he knows he’s fluent, and his terrible accent; there’s always one word he gets dreadfully wrong, and then suddenly everyone’s laughing, and he’s grinning a bit and asking for help with it, and it’s so smooth and so natural that Natasha’s not sure anyone else even realises he’s doing it on purpose, but oh it kills her every time. He’s got the whole room in the palm of his hand; whether he’s talking to them or fighting them, these days, James is always the one in control.

It’s not a mystery why she likes that, either.

+++

Four days later, back at home, vengeance is hers: she gags James and spreads him out on the bed and fucks him till he’s shaking all over, crying with how badly he needs it. Natasha drops the dildo and the harness onto the floor and works a plug into his ass and tells him sweetly not to come as she settles herself comfortably on his cock, and maybe she should have expected it that after two weeks of sleeping in their boots and chaste good morning kisses if they were lucky he snaps and grabs her hips and rolls them both over to fuck her through the mattress, hot and demanding and a little feral, till she’s sobbing in his arms, no less desperate than he is. He presses his thumb against her clit and she scratches up his ass and catches the plug and fucks him with it as he fucks her, and it’s not till well after they’ve both come that she even realises he’s still gagged.

“God,” James says, yanking it down with still-trembling fingers. “God almighty.” He starfishes out on his back, chest heaving, eyes closed. Climbing Everest takes less effort than rolling over and sprawling across his chest. Natasha should get a medal.

“That was spectacular,” she mumbles.

“I want to die like this. Exactly like this. Heart attack and end of story.”

She sighs happily. “Yeah.”

+++

Persian in the kitchen the next morning. Natasha is curled in his lap in the chair at the table and dozing off again, beautifully sore, and James is stroking her hair and murmuring nonsense and love into her ear, less than half awake himself. She taps it out in Morse code against her coffee mug, fingernail ringing the ceramic: P-E-R-S, breaking off when he laughs into her hair and taps her knee with his left thumb, one of the most precious gifts she’s ever been given: L-O-V-E-Y-O-U.

+++

Occasionally, very occasionally, they speak Russian in public, or rather Natasha does, a word or half a sentence, not trying to be secretive – Wanda speaks Russian, her Sokovian secondary school lessons giving the sound of the words a funny tilt, her sentences careful, often overly formal; Clint understands it better than he speaks it, and Steve has a grasp on the basics by now. (Natasha suspects Tony is fairly fluent, but he’s never let on.) She tells herself it’s for her own ease, forcing herself to relax so far as to let her public speech patterns match her private ones. The truth is, it’s a kind of test. Even more so than when it’s just her and James, Natasha feels as though she is giving something up when she speaks Russian with him in public, relaxing a muscle she had not realised was tensed. It puts the same hot spike of nervousness into her stomach as those three mindless minutes during sex when she cannot tell what language James is speaking.

She doesn’t speak all these tongues for fun. They were hammered into her as a small child, her accent polished, her vocabulary expanded by endless piles of newspapers from across the globe, when she was still at that age where learning languages comes most easily to people. Her command of English – of any language – is still a tool, all these years later; her perfect accent still a disguise. Giving up either is a loss of control, a laying down of a weapon.

Or a kind of freedom, depending on how you look at it. (She’s not sure what it says about her that she never even considered trying it until she had him back.)

+++

Natasha never asks how James became such a polyglot. She knows that he would trust her with stories he could never articulate to anyone else, someone who doesn’t understand the way she does; she knows that whatever she asks him he’s likely to tell her. Sometimes it humbles her that he never seems to expect her to reciprocate. Sometimes it makes her angry that he gives her that much trust in the first place. Natasha is not used to being trusted. Being given that power over him puts an obligation on her that, on bad days, she frankly resents.

( _You don’t get to burden me with this!_ she’d yelled at him once, and he’d flung a book across the room and said, _yeah, sometimes I wish I’d never met you too_. And yet by morning they had been back in one another’s arms again, because it was worth it. Which is the easiest thing of all to admit.)

+++

All the same, she can’t help but be curious about the language thing. It’s so complicated for her that it makes her wonder how he feels about it.

“How many languages did you know before?” she asks one night.

James curls closer around her body, humming thoughtfully. “Let’s see. English – some German, by the end of the war – bits and pieces of Italian. Gabe and Dernier taught us French…”

“What did they teach you in school?”

“I don’t remember.” He doesn’t seem upset. “Ask Steve, he’ll know. Oh wait – Latin. If you count that.”

“Latin, really?”

“Catholic school.”

“Ahh.” Natasha smiles. “Dirty talk in Latin. What a thought.”

“Read Catullus.”

She laughs. “They were very careful about our reading material in whatever language. Novels corrupted the mind… It’s been years and I still feel like I’ve only just begun to see what there is out there that I could read.”

“How Victorian.” She can hear the laughter in his voice.

“They offered an alternative,” she says. “Real books. They might show us that life didn’t have to be like this; that there were other ways and other truths…”

“I understand.” He sighs. “You know the first thing I did after DC? I mean after I’d sorted myself out, and found a place to hide, and mostly knew who I was again?”

“No.”

“Found a library. I read _Great Expectations_ cover to cover in an afternoon.”

“Why Dickens?”

“I recognised it.”

“Yes, I see. And then?”

“And then I started reading everything else.” He kisses her shoulder. “It was almost better than the museum. I got halfway through _The Thirty-Nine Steps_ and thought, I’ve read this before and I know how it ends, and it was like coming home.”

Natasha reaches down and laces her fingers through his, her palm against the back of his hand. He squeezes her fingers gently.

“So, to draw you out, build a public library?”

James laughs, his breath stirring her hair. “Or a bookshop. I like having possessions.”

“Don’t they make you feel trapped?”

“Not books.” He’s firm. “You can walk away from a bookshelf and then build it back up again, exactly the same way as before. That’s the point of them.”

That’s one way of looking at it. Natasha draws his hand up to kiss his palm, and slowly they drift into sleep.

+++

After that books start appearing in her things: Wodehouse in her duffle bag for long dull missions, _Jane Eyre_ on her desk, history books on her favourite armchair, Anais Nin in her underwear drawer (god, what has she done to deserve a boyfriend with such a terrible sense of humour?), crime novels in the wide deep pockets of her trench coat, fantasy books on her bedside table… slowly, Russian ones too, French, German, Spanish. He knows her, of course, better than probably anyone else, and he has a good idea of what she’s interested in and what she enjoys and what she’s already read, but Natasha suspects that he also has a talent for picking things people would like to read. It comes of being interested in people, and in books, and in how you match the two.

“He’s almost never wrong,” says Steve, and given that he’s got his nose in a copy of – for crying out loud – Thucydides at the moment and Natasha’s fairly sure she saw James’ handwriting on the cover page when he picked it up she rolls her eyes and goes back to Lord Dunsany.

+++

Romanian one day after a long and particularly fruitless trip to Istanbul. Natasha stumbles in late at night, drinks a cup of coffee so she won’t fall asleep in the shower, sluices the smell of Quinjet and sweat-stained uniform off her skin, and fumbles her way down the corridor to their bedroom naked, scrubbed pink and dry and yawning her head off. James got home less than three hours before her, and he’s sprawled across their bed on his front, face mashed into the pillows, dozing – he would have woken as soon as she came in, and it says a lot about how tired he is that he didn’t come out to greet her.

Natasha pulls the covers back and climbs into bed next to him, settling against his side.

“Hi,” she murmurs.

“Morning,” he mutters back. “You’re OK?”

“Of course.”

“C’mere.” He rolls onto his side, pulling her into the curve of his body, her back to his chest; he likes to sleep like this, holding her safe. Natasha’s too shamelessly fond of being cuddled to mind. James is naked too, smelling of shampoo and shower gel, and it’s Pavlov again, his cock against her ass, his beard brushing her skin when he kisses her shoulder, but she’s too tired for desire to be anything but a distant, dulled yearning. Sleep comes quickly, and for a little while she dreams about dull airports and duller stakeouts, endless, labyrinthine corridors in which she needs to complete a mission she doesn’t understand, until it turns out that the mission is James, and he traps her in some anodyne airport bathroom stall and kisses her. Then she’s naked, pressed up against the door, which is soft and warm and yielding, and his fingers are inside her and she’s working her hips back against him and making embarrassing needy little noises and he says –

“Wake up, love. Tasha, you’re killing me.” His voice is blurry with sleep, deep with amusement and want. The bathroom stall door is the mattress, the sun is out and shining brightly on the bookshelf opposite the window, a long rectangle of golden light across the floor, and his hard cock is trapped between her thighs, nudging at her cunt.

Natasha groans. James kisses her neck, the side of her face; rubs against her.

“Good dream?”

“Might have been.” She’s wet, swollen, ready for him; she rocks against him, yawning. “Hmm?”

“Yeah.” She’s lying in the curve of his right arm; the palm of his left hand rubs across her breast, his fingertips, a little roughened to allow for better grip, pinch and tease her nipple, the friction delightfully harsher than human skin. “Sorry I woke you.” Mischievous.

“So you should be. Too tired to move anyway.”

“Oh, OK. Hold you close next time and just slide right in, see if I can make you come without waking you up…”

What a thought… She doesn’t know if the shudder that takes her is fear or desire or both; he nudges her head back with his fingers on her chin and kisses her, all morning breath and ferocity, his right arm trapping her tight against his chest. Shift, roll forwards a little lift her leg; then he’s in her, and she gasps.

“Sound good?” James says lowly. “Try it sometime. Make sure you’re wet for me, all open and filthy from the night before.”

Natasha catches hold of his left hand, squeezing tight as he moves, closing her eyes against the bright sunlight, sighing. Pleasure jolts her hard, and then softens into ripples as he gentles his thrusts, sighing himself. “I love you,” she says, and he tucks his face into the curve of her neck, pressing so close they’ve not got leverage for much movement.

“Always,” he promises. For a little while they don’t move at all; he’s inside her and they’re so, so close to each other, the press of their bodies all against each other more precious than the sex.

Then, replaying the conversation in her mind, Natasha says, “Romanian.”

“Mmm.” She can feel him smile against her skin.

A bubble of laughter climbs up her throat. “Yay. We should celebrate.”

“We _are_ ,” he says, and when she kisses his fingertips he starts to move again.

+++

Japanese the morning after that, facing each other this time but just as slow and sweet as yesterday.

“I think the programme has been a success,” she says solemnly.

James bites his lip, settling her thigh more comfortably over his hip. “Yeah, it’s turned into a habit.”

“Best habit.” Natasha runs her fingernails down his flank, gentle, gentle, barest hint that she could scratch him if she chose, and watches the goosebumps jumping up in her wake, the way his chest heaves.

“I’d say so.” He reaches between them to brush his finger through her pubic hair and find her clit, and Natasha clenches all around him and says, “Not yet, not yet,” and they kiss and kiss and settle into a lazy rhythm and don’t say anything in any language for a good long while.

+++

“All right,” Natasha murmurs. “You win, Soldier. Sound the trumpets; give the man a medal. I surrender.”

“Hmm?” He raises his head from her shoulder, blinking at her a little hazily; those big hands rub over her back, and she rocks her hips, gasping softly, pressing up against his chest.

“That language,” she says. When James tilts his head back she leans over him, her arms over his shoulders, and her hair falls around their faces; he holds her close with his left hand and raises his right to tuck a few locks behind her ear, cups the nape of her neck in his palm afterwards. “I give up. I don’t know it.”

“That language,” he says, and frowns. “I – it. Uh.” He makes a funny choked off noise, and suddenly he’s shaking with how hard he’s trying not to laugh. Given that Natasha’s sitting on his cock right now, she’s not sure if she ought not to be offended.

“What?”

“I don’t know what it is either!”

Natasha whoops, so loud she startles herself, and James collapses back against the pillows in stitches, red-faced with laughter.

“This must count as some kind of a win for me.”

“Oh come on, you surrendered!”

“I got you to speak a language you can’t even _identify_ ,” she says, cackling, and he catches hold of her again and kisses her, still laughing.

“I _think_ I was describing in detail just how perfect your tits are. At least, if I wasn’t, I meant to…”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.” Natasha buries her hands in his hair, swallowing another whoop of laughter in favour of kissing him.

“They really are perfect,” he says, and kisses the tip of her nose. For a moment his hands span her ribcage below her armpits before he puts them on her breasts. “Soft and sweet and fit my hands just right, made for me, just like all of you.” Pressure and heat and the ever-fascinating sensation of his left hand on her bare skin; suddenly every nerve’s alight again, her face flaming, the gathering throb of her breasts as he plays with them sending a deep hot tug of arousal through her body to her cunt, and Natasha remembers he’s inside her, thick and hot and lovely. She clenches around him, pushing forwards against those marvellous hands, pressing down around his cock.

“God.” Natasha covers his hands with her own, sighing. Then she sniggers again. “Just some random…”

“Try Latin if you don’t shush up.”

“Something you need to concentrate on?”

James laughs again, his lips brushing hers; he’s planted his feet on the mattress, his hips pushing up against her, and they’re moving together again, making their way back to that lovely lazy rhythm, spiralling higher. “Only keeping you happy.”

Natasha smiles. “Oh you know me, darling. I’m easy pleased…”

He scoffs, and she kisses him again, and again, and again, wondering if maybe this slow intimacy, the ease with which they move together, the familiarity of his touch, the way she knows all his reactions by heart before he has them, and can summon goosebumps here or a shiver there with just the right touch, the right pressure in the right place, with the edge of pain or the touch of her tongue, was the most precious language all along.

+++

“Maybe Gaelic?” says Steve thoughtfully. “Ma knew a word or two, it sounds a little like that.”

“No wonder Google got us nowhere,” says Natasha, “probably kept getting the spelling wrong.”

“Never mind,” says James, “it was all unprintable anyway.”

+++

+++

+++

On her birthday James sends her flowers. That makes her happy in and of itself, that there’s no (more) room in their relationship for grand melodramatic gestures or important presents burdened with meaning. It’s nice to just… be given flowers, like any ordinary girl.

The roses are obvious; so are the forget-me-nots. She has to look up the meanings of the others, and frequently there’s more than one, but they’re all in the same vein.

 

 

 


End file.
